Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Battles & Rumors

So, today seemed kind of lame today. I looked around (taking much longer since my Verizon/yahoo! mishap) and found much of todays news was on music battles and rumors.

Well lets start of with

BattlesO.k. it seems M$ and MTV will team up to jointly develop a digital music service for users of the next-generation Windows Media Player and this service will be called "Urge".

According to MTV Networks, Urge will offer a much wider range of music to choose from than can be found on its traditional cable offerings, with a stated goal of helping its users discover new music. Now MTV is playing catch-up, starting this late could hinder the company and the service. MTV first announced plans for a music store back in 2003, it's 2005 now and this may not show till mid/late-2006, and with Apple selling 70% of the online music downloads this is a uphill battle.

"the online music service will launch with a catalogue of two million songs across multiple genres, and will be heavily marketed across MTV's broadcasting assets, MTV, VH1 and CMT."

The site also states

"Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Jupiter Research isn't certain the plan will work: "The biggest paradox is the people who are most likely interested in an MTV-branded music experience are also probably the demographic that has the highest interest in the iPod," he said."

Oh did I mention that this service won't be working with the iPod? This will make it a tough sell. It's seems MTV is trying this by covering part of it's ass by doing double duty. It seems users will be charged according to their selection of individual song downloads or pre-paid subscriptions. So they are not titled as just a subscription service like the rest. (Napster, Rhapsody, etc..)

But shunning the iPod is not a smart thing to do according to Simon Aughton of PCPro:

Apple's dominance of the portable music player market is likely to continue for years according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.In a note to investors, Munster says that the iPod's huge market share gives Apple cost savings that its rivals simply cannot match. Apple's 30GB iPod, for example, is nine per cent cheaper per gigabyte than Creative's new Zen Vision:M.

Munster notes that the video-enabled Zen has impressive features that are absent from the iPod - such as built-in voice recording and an FM tuner - but all the evidence thus far shows that extra features do not generate extra sales.

'We believe that non-iPod devices must compete on price to gain adoption, but Apple has such massive relative shipment volume with the iPod that other MP3 player manufacturers are not able to replicate the economies of scale achieved by Apple,' Munster added. 'We believe this reality will allow Apple to sell iPods at the lowest prices in the market, thus retaining the iPod's pole position for years."

Good luck MTV, maybe if you hook up with Microsoft,Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo they may have a chance. Oh coarse well all know workers at Microsoft got a internal memo to stop bringing their iPods to work. But it seems according to MDN, Redmond will have a Mac store near by.

"Oregon-based retailer Computer Stores NW, owners of the regional chain called "The Mac Store," will open a new retail store just 3 miles from the world headquarters of Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington."

"With the popularity of the iPod, and the resulting growing popularity of the Mac and Apple in general, we thought it was time to see Redmond with a Mac Store in its backyard," said Kevin Anderson, CEO of Computer Stores NW in a statement. "Despite the presence of Microsoft as a major employer in that area, we know there are many Mac devotees in their ranks, and of course the area has great demographics for the iPod and all its accessories."

O.K. now the RumorsIt seems lots of different blogs, newspaper web sites, and Mac web sites seem to have insiders or globes that say "Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) may introduce Macintosh personal computers with Intel Corp. (INTC) chips in January, six months earlier than planned."

Also the buzz is that it may be laptops that are based on Intel's new "Napa" chips.Some say the Napa platform that will enable the biggest upgrade in two years for portable technology, and an Apple laptop with the technology could address the demand that the Mac users have been waiting for.

Intel claims the latest notebook technology will boost average performance 68% beyond that of its current Sonoma platform, while reducing power consumption an average of 28%. But will Apple use Napa or a dual-core Yonah chip? that is the question we will have to wait and see.

Garageband ArtistSimig Media Records announced the immediate availability of Something, an album produced entirely with GarageBand. The album marks Peter Greenstone's debut, and is also the second record for the Mac Music Record label. The artist first heard on the MacJams.com website.

Dick Dale who, invented surf music in the 1950's. he's a fellow Mac user, and he'll be on tonight's show to talk about then and now and how he uses Macs.

Graphics Guru, Lesa Snider of GraphicReporter.com will be on to talk about her Graphics Tip of the Week brought to you by iStockPhoto.com - this week it's all about the "Che Guevara Effect". Peter Cohen of MacCentral.com and Macworld magazine will also be on to talk about all the latest Mac Gaming News.

Hi, I've enjoyed visiting your blog. I am trying to get my creative zen mp3 players site up and running. At the moment I am concentrating on the Zen Touch and Zen Sleek. Sadly, the Zen micro does not appear to still be available from Creative.

I've certainly got some way to go before that site meets the standards of your blog.